In the past year I have dipped my paintbrush in many pots.

   I have painted walls. I have painted lines on a football field. I have painted paintings and murals. I have painted garden ornaments. A few weeks from now, I will venture into face painting. I can justifiably call myself a painter.

   There is an arguably artificial distinction between what in English is called painters and … painters. See the difference? No? Whether this distinction has any implication with regards to status, skill or income is, like beauty or art, entirely in the heart of the beholder. Let me make it a bit clearer by, ahem, painting a little picture.

   Imagine a woman (or man, if you wish). She stands there with an easel, mounted canvasses, sketchbooks, tubes of paint and a bag of brushes, solvents and other tools of the trade. She is a painter and when the day is done, she will have made/created/painted a painting. You may, if you wish, call her an artist.

   Now imagine another woman (or man, more likely). She stands there with a ladder, drip sheets, buckets of paint and a container with brushes, sponges and other tools of the trade. She is a painter and when the day is done, she will have painted a wall/roof/ceiling. What she will not have done, is painted a painting.

   I have always found the inadequacy of language in this sense frustrating. English does not distinguish between a painter (tradesman) and a painter (artist). If you work with paint, you are designated a painter. The same applies to German (maler), French (peintre) and Spanish (pintor). In Dutch and its close cousin Afrikaans there are two words (schilder/skilder and verver/verwer), which in Dutch can be used interchangeably.

   Of the few languages in my limited field of knowledge, it is only Afrikaans which has a word (skilder) referring (almost) exclusively to an artist painter. It is descended from the Dutch word schildmaker meaning “shield maker”, referring to the painting of heraldic shields.

   To paint or not to paint is no question for me. Painter or painter – my brush will yet visit many more paint pots before this life is done.

I love autumn. And I love the first of May (which is autumn here in the southern hemisphere). But most of all I love the Afrikaans poem by South African poet N.P. Van Wyk Louw, written in Amsterdam in 1950.
   Every year as I open my eyes and think - Ah, the first of May - the poem lies ready on my heart and lips:

"Die Eerste Mei is wit en blou
en elke bloeisel sing
en elke burger het sy hond
hier in die park gebring
om onder hierdie Boland-lug
te akkie waar hy wil,
maar ek loop in my hart en sing:
my fees is een April..."
etcetera

So this year I tried my hand at translating this poem into English. I am not sure whether I quite succeeded - Louw was such a marvelous poet, blending language codes with masterful acuity, and all translations must lose something. He himself said in a poem "Something is written in starry clarity/which I rewrite in dust" (my translation). So here is my dusty version:

May Festival in Amsterdam – N.P. van Wyk Louw

The first of May is blue and white
and every blossom sings
and every burgher brings
his dog here to the park
where under this half-familiar sky
it poos to make a mark,
but my song in my own heart rings:
I celebrate April first.

I celebrate for the sombre ones
on lusciousness well-fed
as sober and married pairs
turn to double beds;
the Truth is endless old:
our words to silence drift;
my word was never true:
I celebrate April first.

I celebrate drunker than the fest
of ‘Tristan’, ‘Lancelot’!
who hormone-incited
their way to death have trod.
Our best is pitifully poor.
God’s testament re-versed:
fools can turn to wise men:
I celebrate April first.

I celebrate in a cool, grey eye
that darkens with the wine
my teeth are white from milk
and milk is pure and fine:
I praise those who purely in prayer
the power of seed dispersed
and singing I retreat from May:
I celebrate April first.

translated from Afrikaans by Ilse van Staden